I've been playing around with dominate animal, and looking at WMONdefault.txt to see which monsters would make the best pets.
What's up with some monsters not having skills for their intrinsic weapons? e.g Dragon Rats have Flame Breath (beamgun SCATTER BURN), but no small arms skill. This could be intentional, since it might still hit for at least some damage. But it's only DC2.
I checked out the set of non-combat skills possesed by any dominatable monster. I love that gremlins have General and Mecha repair! They have hands, so you can give them a rifle, armor, and a shield. They're pretty wimpy, and can't carry much, though. If you set DIRECTSKILLOK, they'll eventually learn small arms, and then improve it when you Do Training. I think Electric Rats having Flirtation is a typo. Right? "Hey baby, I can shoot lightning. Hubba Hubba."
I don't think I've ever encoutered a Thunder Rat. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention to what I was killing, but has anyone else ever seen one? An electric rat should evolve into one after 3000 XP. Speaking of rats, too bad radioactive rats will never use their self-destruct. (Melee, DC9, armorpiercing blast 3!) The AI never makes BLAST attacks that hit itself. I could add an UNSAFE tag, to make the AI not check SafeToFire()...
Speaking of evolution, why aren't there any monsters in the BEAR genepool with a non-zero evolveat? Did some of the bears used to be able to evolve in earlier versions, or what?
Do Hunter-Xs make good lancemates? (Only the Larvae have a DomTarget, so you have to get them when they're young. But then they can evolve into anything. It looks quite well thought out.) They don't have hands, so the only ranged weapons you could give them would be ones integrated into armor or shields. (Tails can equip shields, including gun-shields. And it's pretty funny to put a ceram breastplate and helmet on a dragon serpent or a stormfeather, or otherwise completely non-humanoid body. In GearHead, a rat can aim and fire a havoc legging.
The key strategy for giving good ranged attacks to monsters is to have a couple Solar Spears + magnet tokens in their general inventory. They can throw them from there. The max range is (body+2)/3 + 2, capped at 12. Omega-1004 is pretty good with a solar spear, too. I find giving lancemates (as opposed to pets) a Laser Cannon + Gas Vents, a shield and some other weapon, and a Solar Spear + Magnet Token in their inventory, is a very good combination. Or if they're not that strong and have good small arms to start with, I'll give them a rocket rifle and laser rifle. And everyone gets deathwings! And a blade bracer for weapon parrying and a high-damage melee attack. armless creatures can wear blade bracers.
(grenade throwing range is (body+2)/3 * 2 + 1. again, body+2/3 is capped at 10. The AI never uses grenades.)
One cheap way to get more pets in your lance than your charm, leadership, and renown should allow is to kill enough pets to get your lancemates down below the limit, since the lancemate points counting function only counts active gears. This makes sense, because if you just dominated a rat to use as cannon fodder, you want to be able to dominate another one when the first one dies. It is possible to do this without becoming chaotic, and without any risk of not being able to revive them: You become a villain for attacking a non-enemy only if you target them (i.e. their tile). Area attacks that just happen to hit them don't have _any_ effect on your reputation. It's very easy to hit someone with a plasma cannon without targetting their tile, so the attack code doesn't know you were aiming at them on purpose. Similarly for a thumper or grenades (and ARMORPIERCING BLAST attacks are quite effective). Taking a lot of damage is bad for morale, of course. Lancemates that have a repair skill, esp. mecha repair, can get lots of XP, which is an easy way to cheer them up. XP is the only significant source of positive morale for lancemates, AFAIK, so a code breaking expedition works too. (And is double useful after getting a bunch of new lancemates.)
When the PC uses a repair skill on a destroyed (dead) character gear, they take 30 points of structural damage (general hit points) if they're still destroyed after the repair attempt. i.e. if you use medicine and it doesn't bring them back on the first try, you're 30 points in the hole. This can be a problem if their head or body is destroyed and their hitpoints are at zero. The repair attempt won't divide the repair points between the modules and general hitpoints. It will fix one all the way up before doing anything to the other. This 30 point penalty is in backpack.pp, where it only applies to the PC. BTW, this applies to _any_ repair skill, so don't go fixing your lancemate's armor before using medicine!
Lancemates call userepair from aibrain.pp, and nothing bad happens if a character is still dead after they try. Otherwise there'd have to be a lot of code to make sure they didn't come in with medicine skill 1 and make someone nearly un-recoverable. (If you can repair more than 30 damage in one medicine attempt, you can save anyone if you have enough time and repairfuel!) Anyway, a lancemate with medicine (or biotech or general repair, as appropriate) can restore any dead lancemate or pet with 100% success. I would consider this to be exploiting the game mechanics (literally, if it's general repair).
Good lancemates so far:
Moon Bear: Good body stat (19), and good at armed combat (Re 17, Armed Combat 8. Dodge 4). Does pretty well with a solar spear, and of course doesn't die very easily. Can wear armor on all body locations, and even carry a shield! Now that's sillly. I renamed my Moon Bear to State O' Maine. They're not that hard to dominate either (DomTarget 19). And their intrinsic weapons are good. They don't have Initiative or Vitality, like some bears, but they can learn Vitality. Nothing gives Initiative skillxp, though.
Gremlin: biotech, so good for giving the rest of your lance some biotech skill practice. They can wear armor, but they have no dodge skill. If you set DIRECTSKILLOK, they'll probably learn it after a while. They'll probably learn Vitality first... They have general and mecha repair skills, so a gremlin would be an asset for a PC with no other lancemate with those skills. (mecha repair is mostly useful for the XP. I don't usually use it in the field, and you can always repair between fights. You have to buy repair supplies, too, so you're not saving money. Well, except for scavenged mecha parts from a Sentinel, which just cost MP to get, but they're too rare for that to matter.) Gremlins are the only dominatable monster with hands.
StormFeather: Nice long-range haywire weapons, and the lightning storm is SWARM. Good combat skills.
Hunter Larvae: Will evolve into a Hunter-X. All the Hunter-Xs <= the Hunter Killer can evolve further. (if it doesn't have an extendable jaw, it can evolve.) A hunter-destroyer wearing external armor and carrying solar spears and a lobster shield would be unstopable. except from long range, of course.
fire penguin: Will evolve into an emperor fire penguin, which has a Hyper beamgun and an Armorpiercing emelee Flaming Peck, (That's +4 penetration!), and swarm missile feathers. You can dominate an emperor fp directly, though (target 25). Emperors have skill rank 8 in all the attack skills (6-9), and dodge 10. Initiative 8.
Dragon Serpent: Will evolve into a dragon (after 20000XP). Dragons are good. Might not really pull its weight until then.
Albino alligator: body 20, AC 5, so could hit at long range with a solar spear. Has lots of skills, including spot weakness.
Sea Dragon: Armed Combat 12. Body 19. Besides being a tough dragon, it could rip anything to shreds with solar spears! DomTarget 25.
Deep Lobster: Body 29. no AC, but they can learn. Their electric jolt has INTERCEPT. Cool.
